EXPLORING PAST CLIMATE VARIABILITY IN THE GREATER ALPINE REGION

The presentation discusses the potential, the needs and the state of the art of climate variability data quality and analysis in the instrumental period. The greater alpine region is used as an example. Problems and solutions concerning the non climatic noise in time series is discussed (the homogeneity and outlier problem) and some first results based on the new HISTALP datasets are shown

Empirical essays on the socioeconomic consequences of economic uncertainty

German fertility rates are far below the replacement level, meaning that its population is projected to shrink. This implies a threat to sustainable economic growth and the stability of the social security system. Thus, fertility behavior is of highest interest for policymakers. Economic research has identified several reasons for the low fertility level, including changes in preferences and values, socioeconomic factors, and institutional settings. As pointed out by Garry Becker in a very simple theoretical model, economic circumstances and, especially, labor market conditions are of major importance in fertility decisions since they determine the opportunity costs of childbearing. The contribution of this dissertation is that it empirically investigates in four stand-alone research papers the socioeconomic consequences arising from economic uncertainty on the labor market. At the aggregate level, Chapter 1 focuses on the short-run effects of local labor market conditions on period fertility measures. The long-run effects on cohort fertility are presented in Chapter 2. At the individual level, Chapter 3 empirically investigates the effects of starting a career with a fixed-term contract on the quantum and timing of fertility whereas Chapter 4 turns the attention to the health consequences of economic uncertainty in early career years. The main findings suggest that economic uncertainty at the individual and aggregate level has a major influence on fertility decisions as well as the mental health status of the young generation (below age 40). However, there is strong evidence for gender-specific effects on both the individual and aggregate level meaning that women react differently to economic uncertainty during the early career years than men do. This has important implications for the policy recommendations: First, a well-designed family-oriented labor market policy should minimize the gender-specific negative consequences of economic uncertainty. Second, it should strive for a more equal distribution of the individual costs associated with flexible labor markets

Experiences with creating a Precision Dairy Farming Ontology (DFO) and a Knowledge Graph for the Data Integration Platform in agriOpenLink

One of the central problems in creating information management solutions for precision dairy farming is integration and interpretation of heterogeneous data coming from different equipment and data sources. Establishing a unifying data model is recognized as a cornerstone to such solutions. Here, the challenge lies both in agreeing on a common information context, and in selecting appropriate model representations, model query and update techniques, which guarantee model extensibility. While already existing ISOagriNET Data Dictionaries capture broad variety of the livestock and dairy farming concepts, the existing model representation technics cannot support efficient model extension. In this paper, we present our experience with using the representation and query standards and tools of the Semantic Web, endorsed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), in particular the Resource Description Framework (RDF), the Web Ontology Language (OWL), and the SPARQL query standard, to encode and manipulate the dairy farming domain knowledge in a form of the Dairy Farming Ontology (DFO). Within the research project agriOpenLink the DFO has been created in two phases. The first phase focused on using the Semantic Web tools to facilitate easy encoding and manipulation of the dairy farming domain knowledge and the platform operational data models. The second phase focused on translating ISOagriNET Data Dictionaries into their semantic representations. Resulting DFO is maintained in a semantic repository, and it presents a knowledge graph and as integration backbone for the agriOpenLink decision support platform.</jats:p

Zeit für Familie – Thema des 8. Familienberichts

Am 28. Oktober 2011 wurde in Berlin der 8. Familienbericht an die Bundesministerin für Familie, Senioren, Frauen und Jugend übergeben. Er beschäftigt sich mit dem Thema »Zeit für Familie« und mit den Notwendigkeiten und Möglichkeiten einer Familienzeitpolitik. Für die Erstellung des Berichts wurde eine achtköpfige Sachverständigenkommission, zusammengesetzt aus den Bereichen der Betriebs- und Volkswirtschaftslehre, der Soziologie, der Entwicklungspsychologie und der Rechtswissenschaften, berufen. Das ifo Institut, das mit den Aufgaben einer Geschäftsstelle beauftragt wurde, hat die Kommission organisatorisch betreut und wesentliche inhaltliche Beiträge geliefert. Insbesondere hat es die empirische Unterfütterung der Diskussionen und des Berichts übernommen.Zeit, Zeitverwendung, Arbeitszeit, Familie, Freizeit, Familienpolitik, Deutschland

Nano-assembled open quantum dot nanotube devices

A pristine suspended carbon nanotube is a near ideal environment to host long-lived quantum states. For this reason, they have been used as the core element of qubits and to explore numerous condensed matter physics phenomena. One of the most advanced technique to realize complex carbon nanotube based quantum circuits relies on a mechanical integration of the nanotube into the circuit. Despite the high-quality and complexity of the fabricated circuits, the range of possible experiments was limited to the closed quantum dot regime. Here, by engineering a transparent metal-nanotube interface, we developed a technique that overcomes this limitation. We reliably reach the open quantum dot regime as demonstrated by measurements of Fabry-Perot interferences and Kondo physics in multiple devices. A circuit-nanotube alignment precision of ± 200 nm is demonstrated. Our technique allows to envision experiments requiring the combination of complex circuits and strongly coupled carbon nanotubes such as the realization of carbon nanotube superconducting qubits or flux-mediated optomechanics experiments

THE NEW CENTENNIAL SNOW INITIATIVE FOR THE GREATER ALPINE REGION (GAR). STATUS REPORT AND FIRST RESULTS

Snow is a significant element in the climate system and has great impact on ecosystem and economy in the Alps, too. Astonishingly there is still a strong gap between the data potential and the data availability. Caused by the existing deficits we started a digitising, quality evaluation, homogenising and analysing initiative for the Alpine region. For the first time we can present a 21-year (1895-1915) daily, high density dataset that was electronically scanned from historic hydro-yearbooks for recent Austria and additional some surrounding regions in Italy, Slovenia, Croatia and Czech Republic. We hope that our snow initiative will grow to a pan-alpine effort to fill the existing lack of information

A Novel Concept for In-Situ Gas-Phase Laser Raman Spectroscopy for SOFC

Gas-phase laser Raman spectroscopy has recently been adopted to determine the concentrations of relevant gaseous species within the anode flow channel with high spatial and temporal resolution during operation at technically relevant operating conditions. The paper describes the configuration of an optically accessible SOFC, the laser system and optical setup for 1 D Raman spectroscopy as well as the challenges associated with the measurements of an electrolyte supported cell of a size of 50 x 50 mm2. At different operating conditions Raman spectra were recorded and concentration profiles of gas species along the flow path in the anode were determined demonstrating this new experimental approach for a better understanding of SOFC processes

Duplicate Table Detection with Xash

Data lakes are typically lightly curated and as such prone to data quality problems and inconsistencies. In particular, duplicate tables are common in most repositories. The goal of duplicate table detection is to identify those tables that display the same data. Comparing tables is generally quite expensive as the order of rows and columns might differ for otherwise identical tables. In this paper, we explore the application of Xash, a hash function previously proposed for the discovery of multi-column join candidates, for the use case of duplicate table detection. With Xash, it is possible to generate a so-called super key, which serves like a bloom filter and instantly identifies the existence of particular cell values. We show that using Xash it is possible to speed up the duplicate table detection process significantly. In comparison to SimHash and other competing hash functions, Xash results in fewer false positive candidates